and Swarts Swarts

Old Man Bill on Ruby Road murdered his brother, or that’s the story spread around town for years, When Dallas O’Donnell and his friend C. W. drive out to throw a gallon of red paint at the house, they don’t expect to get caught but …

Superstition and rumors can make teenagers do dumb things so Dallas O'Donnell throws red paint onto Old Bill's house. But Wade O’Donnell is the Sheriff and he is going to have Dallas make restitution. Dallas is to paint Old Bill’s house, and while is doing so, he makes a connection with Bill and with Bill’s GTO out in the shed.

Great coming of age story along with the beautiful GTO. A young adult mystery.… (mehr)

Drive Down Ruby Road by Swarts and Swarts

5 stars
Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781937216221
Publisher: Prairie Muse Publishing
Publication date: 10/23/2011
Pages: 122
Sales rank: 818,557
Product dimensions: 5.00 (w) x 8.00 (h) x 0.29 (d)



Summary:
Drive Down Ruby Road is about the unlikely relationship of Dallas O’ Donnell and “Bloody Bill” Hawkins. “Bloody Bill” has a reputation of once killing his younger brother, Charlie, so kids make a habit of tossing red paint on his porch. Dallas happens to be the first person to get caught in the act. What makes things worse is that his father is the county sheriff and in order to calm Bill down, he says that Dallas will spend his summer repainting Bill’s whole house. At first, Dallas is very upset about this new chore, but while he is exploring the property, he finds a classic GTO. Dallas slowly begins to understand that Bill is misunderstood and feels bad for all of the torment that he has had to go through. He begins to fix up the GTO and investigate the death of Bill’s younger brother. This leads to a town wide investigation to try to prove a cold case and clear an innocent man’s name.
My thoughts:
This was an extremely quick read for me. I enjoyed the mixture between mystery, coming of age, and gearhead aspects of the story. Dallas’s character shows a great deal of maturity as he helps Bill come out of his shell. It allows the young to benefit from some of the strengths of the old, and also gives Dallas a chance to see great changes in someone who was much older than himself. The descriptions of how Dallas fixes up all aspects of the GTO makes me feel like I have no idea how a car works. I understand that things have changed and our cars are more computers than they used to be, but I can see how someone who likes to tinker with things would get a kick out of this aspect of the book. Dallas describes the entire process of fixing the car, and all of the new things that he needs. When I was reading through these parts, I was picturing one of my best friends. He never liked reading, but he loved working on cars. I wonder if a book like this would have gathered his interest just like a car did. Finally, the mystery of figuring out who killed Charlie adds another high interest level to the reading. With all of these layers, and the fact that the book is only 117 pages, I would recommend this to all of my reluctant readers. I passed it straight over to our lowest reading group, and had a few gentlemen that took to it immediately. They are craving books that look like teenage books, with teenage topics, and still at a low enough level for them to read. This met all of their requirements and led me to search for more within the series.
5 stars!… (mehr)